


Today, Tomorrow, Forever

by sarahmademedoit



Series: Time [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Auror Harry Potter, Divorce, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Infidelity, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Professor Draco Malfoy (Implied), Professor Harry Potter (Implied), Prostitute Draco Malfoy, Redeemed Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 07:56:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20170816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmademedoit/pseuds/sarahmademedoit
Summary: He watches the movie, if for no other reason than to satiate his curiosity. The whole time, he thinks that Draco makes a much prettier prostitute, and that he would love to sweep Draco off his feet. He would love to be everything Draco ever wanted and more. He would love to drape Draco in the finest jewelry, and re-welcome him to the upper echelon that Harry has been thrust into, and kiss him like he so desperately wants.





	Today, Tomorrow, Forever

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't live with myself without writing a conclusion to my other work, "Tonight". This will make sense without reading the first work, but they do go together. All recognizable characters and plot points are not my property. As always, Sarah made me do it.

His head is pillowed against Harry’s chest. A long, pale finger twitches against the sheets beside Harry’s rib.

“How did this happen?”

A blond eyebrow twitches up. “The same way it always happens. You walk up the street. I bring you inside. We fuck.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

His voice is sharper than he intends. If this were Ginny against his chest, it would end in tears, a few broken mugs, and a voice hoarse from screaming. But this isn’t Ginny.

Harry’s body is cool and sticky when Draco rises from the mattress. His silence is deafening as he pulls back on black skinny jeans and a loose black muscle-t.

“It’s twenty pounds for the fuck.”

Harry forks over the bills in silence.

-0-

“You’re hair is gorgeous like this.”

“A sweaty mess?”

Harry runs his fingers through it, gently prying apart tangles.

“Loose,” he corrects softly. “‘S soft. Nice.”

Draco rolls his eyes but accepts the petting. “Oh so eloquent.”

“Tosser.”

“Prick.”

“I thought you rather liked my prick.”

Draco snorts inelegantly. His nose scrunches and his face nearly collapses in on itself. "You're awful."

“You’re cute when you snort.”

Draco shakes his head a bit, rolling his eyes once more.

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“Mmm. That’s rather what I’m hoping.”

~

“If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

It’s a thing now - talking after sex.

Draco rolls onto his back, mouth pulling into a thoughtful frown. Harry is hit with the sudden urge to kiss the pout. He doesn’t.

“Muggle New York, I guess. I’m already used to the muggle world and I like it well enough. Besides, I like the idea that I could disappear. Nobody would know my name. I might actually make better money there because of the accent and whatnot.”

“So you’d still be a whore?”

An expression flickers across Draco’s face so quickly Harry nearly misses it. Still, seeing it doesn’t mean he understands it. Before he can ask after it, Draco has pinned him with molten eyes.

“What about you? Where would you go if you could go anywhere in the world?”

Harry sighs, making eye contact with the ceiling.

“Dunno. Muggle New York doesn’t sound too bad.”

Draco makes a face and elbows him gently. “Oh, c’mon. You’re only saying that because I said it.”

Harry smiles, and it feels like the first genuine smile he’s made in ages. He shrugs a bit, rolling onto his side to look at Draco better.

“Maybe. I didn’t really have an answer in mind. I just wanted to know your answer.”

Draco makes a face that Harry knows better - one of clear disbelief.

“Sure. And the Queen is my grandmother.”

“I’m serious! Is it so unbelievable that I’d ask a question with the sole intention of getting to know you?”

Draco rolls over to look at him properly. They lie in silence for endless seconds, Draco searching his face. Then his expression softens, and Harry watches in awe as the walls fall.

“Yes.” The honesty written on Draco’s face is frightening in its intensity. “Yes, it really is.”

~

“You never answered me.”

“What are you babbling about this time?”

“I asked how you got into this. You never answered me.”

“Maybe because I don’t owe you an explanation for all my life decisions.”

Harry rolls over to look at him. He looks his fill, takes in the curves and angles of Draco’s face in the low light of the street lamp outside.

“You’re right,” he finally says. “You don’t owe me anything. I’d still like to know.”

Draco breaks their staring contest to look up at the ceiling. That thinking frown is back. Harry still desperately wants to kiss it. He still doesn’t.

“It was rather like Pretty Woman, honestly.”

“What?”

“The muggle film?”

“You watch muggle films?”

Draco pulls a face. “I work in the red light district of Muggle London, Potter. It’d be pretty difficult for me to get by if I didn’t know something of the culture.”

“True. I still don’t get the reference.”

Draco makes a vague gesture.

“It’s about a prostitute who gets swept off her feet by a rich man. It’s got a happy ending but I won’t spoil it in case you decide to watch it. Anyways, there’s a scene where the rich man asks that very question. And the prostitute says she just sort of accidentally fell into it. It starts with one client, one time, for some quick cash. Then you get some regulars. Then it doesn’t suck so terribly and you find that you’re in and there’s no use trying to get back out. Even though you desperately want to get out, you find you can’t. And that’s the truth of it, really.”

Draco looks at him, and the walls have fallen, and Harry is left in awe.

Draco shrugs, the sheet bunching beneath his shoulder. “I needed the money,” he continues. “I needed money and nobody was going to hire me to work in their shop, but people will always pay for pretty things.”

Harry nearly says something foolish like _Let me sweep you off your feet like a rich man in a muggle movie_ or _I’ve fallen madly in love with you_. He holds back, and only barely. Instead, he says:

“I’ll be sure to watch the movie, sometime.”

~

(He watches the movie, if for no other reason than to satiate his curiosity. The whole time, he thinks that Draco makes a much prettier prostitute, and that he would love to sweep Draco off his feet. He would love to be everything Draco ever wanted and more. He would love to drape Draco in the finest jewelry, and re-welcome him to the upper echelon that Harry has been thrust into, and kiss him like he so desperately wants.)

~

“If you weren’t a prostitute, what would you be?”

“An astrophysicist.”

“A what?”

“Never mind - it’s a muggle thing.”

It always surprises Harry, when Draco makes jokes using muggle terminology or slang. A large part of Harry still sees Draco as ‘Malfoy’ - as the prat who called Hermione a mudblood and shat on anything that wasn’t pureblood culture. It’s unbalancing to see Draco as an adult, not a spoiled, spiteful, bigoted child. (It’s thrilling, all the same.)

“But seriously,” Harry says, drawing them back to the topic. “What would you be?”

Draco sighs, running his hand through Harry’s chest hair. His pale fingers are especially white against the dark brown of Harry’s chest.

“I think I’d be a potions professor.” Draco’s voice is hesitant and a little apologetic, like he knows it’s absurd but he’d like to humor the fantasy a little longer. Harry strokes a hand down his back and back up in encouragement.

“I tutored most of the Slytherins, as well as some Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs,” Draco confesses. “I really loved it.” His voice has gone quiet, safe in the bubble of perfection he’s escaped into.

“Dunno. There was something magical about watching people learn the craft and come to respect it. Potions is so finicky, so delicate. You have to see the ingredients and the cauldron as equals. You can’t be some tyrant forcing them into the right potion. Everything has to be coaxed and gentled into the proper form. It’s difficult and messy, but it’s brilliant and so satisfying when you get it right.”

Harry smiles, still stroking Draco’s back. The man before him is alive, riveting and reverent as he talks about brewing. It makes Harry wish he’d known Draco before it all went to shit, before Draco found himself scraping by as a prostitute, before Harry fell into bed with him and started to fall slowly, deeply, inexorably in love.

“You deserve that,” Harry says. He doesn’t have it in him to take it back. Just lays it out there and waits for the walls to come slamming back up between them as they always do.

Draco seems to deflate and stiffen all at once. His hand stops its motions on Harry’s chest, then pulls away entirely. Still, the walls aren’t up.

Harry feels his heart shatter as Draco whispers, “No, I really don’t.”

~

“I divorced Ginny today.”

“Oh? Why on earth would you do that?”

“Because of you.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I’d imagine the chronic infidelity of fucking a whore more nights than not would have some affect on even the strongest marriages.”

Harry just shrugs. Draco was part of the problem with his marriage, sure. But the bigger problem was that they married when they were fresh out of Hogwarts. They were young, in love, and thrilled to have survived the war in the first place. It seemed logical at the time, the thing to do when you think you might love someone. It wasn’t. The last seven years had shown that well enough.

“I like your arse more than I like hers,” he finally says. It’s a weak attempt at a joke. Draco levels him with an unimpressed glare.

“I know Gryffindors are known for their stupidity, but that’s truly ridiculous. You don’t throw away a perfectly good marriage for a nice piece of arse, Potter.”

“You’re more than a piece of ass. When have I ever treated you like a piece of ass?”

Draco rolls his eyes again, and this time he gets out of bed with it. Harry shoves on his glasses to watch as Draco tugs up his shorts and walls at the same time.

“Twenty pounds for the fuck, Potter. You know the drill.”

“Draco, answer me! When have I ever treated you like a piece of ass?”

Draco’s eyes are burning as he spits out his words. “Keep my name off your lips, Potter. I don’t know when this little Talk-to-Malfoy-to-Avoid-Your-Own-Problems project began, but it’s high time it came to a close. Now pay me and leave.”

Harry swallows the burning words in his throat. He’s in no mood to argue, and he’s no match for Draco’s mind in the first place. So he nods, and fishes through his crumpled jeans for his wallet.

~

(Harry doesn’t see Draco for six nights in a row. He wishes he could say that he’s been on an Auror mission or that he’d been hanging out with his friends. He hasn’t. He’s been home, thinking. Sometimes about the men who Draco is smiling coyly at and welcoming into that dim room with warm sheets; but mostly about different ways he can apologize to Draco. None of them seem good enough - not for the magnetic, prickly, mouthy, hilarious, gorgeous, shy, everything blond who’s carved a life for himself in the red light district of Muggle London despite being worth all the gold in the world and a bit more on top.

What he does isn’t enough. He knows it isn’t. Still, he tries.)

~

Harry pulls open the door with wand raised and eyes still bleary from sleep. Instead of a rabid mob of reporters, however, Draco Malfoy stands at his door. Still, a single look at the blond has Harry thinking the wand may well be useful. Draco’s eyes are downright murderous as he grips a stack of parchment in one fist.

Harry lowers his wand and waves him in wordlessly. Draco steps into the hallway, then deeper into the house.

“Can I get you a cuppa?”

Draco stiffens slightly, then shakes his head. “No, thank you. I doubt I’ll be here that long.”

Harry feels his eyebrows raise before he lowers them resignedly. He gets the feeling he knows what’s on those parchments. Time to face the music, then.

He slips through the narrow space between Draco and the wall before waving him into the living room. Harry settles himself into the armchair and watches as the Draco perches on the edge of the seat. (Part of him wonders if Draco’s just gotten off a shift. Part of him already knows.)

The silence is oppressive as they stare at one another. Draco finally looks down at his hands, shuffling the papers in what’s obviously a nervous habit.

“I ought to be clear: I came for one thing.” Draco’s voice is lacking it’s usual drawl, vowels and consonants clear and thick with some unnamed emotion. “Your power, and fame, and-and _influence_ are yours to use as you please. And frankly, I’m in too desperate a state to refuse,” he pauses, gesturing vaguely with the papers. “To refuse this opportunity - the lease, the job offer, any of it.”

Draco stops, rubbing the heel of his hand over his eye. “So I have just one question. What do you want in return?”

Harry feels his blood stop running in his veins.

Draco plows on, clearly unnoticing of Harry’s small death. “Is-is it exclusive access that you want? Or maybe you want to get kinky? Is that it? ‘Cause you didn’t have to lease a fucking house under a pseudonym for us to negotiate some kinky shit, Potter. Or-”

“I don’t want anything from you, Draco.”

Draco finally meets his eye, looking as though he’s been struck clean across the face.

“So, what?” he splutters. “All of this is just some charity case?”

Harry shrugs, uncomfortable under such intense eyes. He never thought he’d have to explain his thinking. He never even thought Draco would accept the help in the first place.

“I did all of,” he waves a hand at the paperwork hanging limply from Draco’s hand. “All of that because it’s the right thing to do.”

And it is. He isn’t lying. Doing right by Draco, giving him the second chance he so clearly deserves, is the right thing to do. It just has nothing to do with why Harry went to such lengths.

“Bullshit! That is absolute BULLSHIT, POTTER!”

Harry’s blood comes roaring back online. Talking through his emotional diarrhea and motives? He doesn’t know jack shit about that. But screaming matches? He’s an expert in those.

“WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, DRACO? CONFESS MY UNDYING BLOODY LOVE FOR YOU? GET DOWN ON BENT KNEE AND PROPOSE? I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE READ THE PAPERS LATELY, BUT I'M NOT EXACTLY THE MARRYING SORT!”

“I WANT YOU TO-” Draco cuts off suddenly, mashing the heels of his hands into his eyes. It looks like it hurts. Harry doesn’t try to stop him.

“Y’know what? No.” Draco’s voice is wobbly as he shakes his head back and forth. “No. I’m not getting into a screaming match with you at arse-o’clock in the morning.”

He rises suddenly, shuffling the papers into a neat pile.

“I don’t expect your _undying love_, Potter,” he says as he folds the papers into precise thirds. “I want you to be honest with yourself.”

His eyes are red-rimmed and resigned as he stares Harry down. It’s painfully reminiscent of the prefects bathroom and pools of blood on tile. But this time there are no wands at the ready. Harry hasn’t even seen Draco’s wand since the final battle, in retrospect.

Draco coughs out a laugh and it sounds like defeat. “I know what you look like when you want something, Harry.” His first name feels like a slap. “I’ve known you since we were eleven and both of us were scared shitless that we couldn’t live up to our own names. And you’re still so fucking afraid, aren’t you?”

Draco coughs out another little laugh, shaking his head. He looks down, thwacking the parchment against his thigh. “Like I said: I don’t have enough options in this life to turn down your help. So have fun wetting your dick in another twinky blond. You should try out Malcom - he’s on your favourite block and he only charges 15 pounds for a fuck.”

Draco slips behind the chair and out of the room. Harry immediately storms after him, steps deafening in his own ears. He grabs Draco by the wrist and whirls him around. Draco stumbles, but before he can right himself, Harry has shoved him against the wall so hard the paintings rattle.

“You don’t get to run away from me, Draco,” Harry hisses. Draco keeps his eyes on the floor, head tilted to expose his throat. “You don’t get to say shit like that and walk away like it’s nothing. What the _fuck_ was that little tirade supposed to mean?”

Draco says nothing. A single tear slips down his cheek to bead on a flushed nose.

“ANSWER ME,” Harry roars.

Draco pulls in a shuddering breath. “You’re hurting me.”

His voice is painfully small. It stings like a slap all the more for it. Harry jerks away from him, stumbling into the opposite wall. Draco rubs at his wrist. It’s already bruising.

“Remember when you asked if you ever treated me like a whore?” Draco pins him with an unreadable look, walls up and opaque. “You just did.”

Draco walks out, papers still clutched in his fist. Harry lets him.

~

It doesn’t feel good, using his knowledge for this purpose. It doesn’t feel good, but he does it anyway.

He checks the address one more paranoid time before knocking. The wood is satisfyingly dense beneath his knuckles. Harry rocks back on his heels, then forward again. Nobody has even accused him of having an abundance of patience. He takes a breath and knocks again, longer this time. Halfway through his rhythm, the door swings open.

Draco stands in the doorway in a pair of old sweatpants, a t-shirt that’s nearly transparent and clearly three sizes too large, and soft pink slippers. His hair is in a messy bun at the top of his head. The bags beneath his eyes are dark and have nearly graduated to suitcases. He’s got large glasses on his nose, a pimple on his chin, and a scowl on his lips. In short, he looks stunning.

Harry’s words dry on his lips at the sight of him. “Uhm.”

Draco scowls harder, and waves him inside. Harry steps into the hallway, looking around with unmasked curiosity. The decoration is sparse and airy. Harry likes it immediately. He turns around at a clatter to see Draco setting a hunting knife in a bowl by the door. Harry’s eyes search for a wand. They don’t find one.

They look at one another. Harry can’t find his words. He twiddles with his wand, unsure of what to do. Draco sighs, then slips past him on a wave of deja vu. Harry follows, desperately trying to remember the speech he had planned out.

Draco brings him into the kitchen, where a pan is simmering on the stove. He gestures to the cabinet across from him. “Get some plates, please.”

His voice is scratchy and soft, like he hasn’t spoken today. Harry is immediately hit with a wanting to hear it forever. He does as he’s bid, pulling down plates and two cups from their careful piles. Draco stirs the content of the pot for a bit before serving them directly from the pan. Out tumbles an egg, potato, and sausage hash.

“There’s juice in the fridge,” he murmurs. Harry immediately goes to the white appliance, pulling the carton of orange juice from it’s depths.

Maybe it’s the early hour. Maybe it’s the weekend glow. Maybe it’s how damn tasty the food is, or the way Draco keeps stealing potatoes from Harry plate and pouring orange juice from his cup into Harry’s like it’s a fair exchange. Whatever it is, the silence is comfortable. If for only those thirty-seven minutes, they’ve laid down their arms.

Draco lays down his fork and rises to set the kettle brewing without asking if Harry wants tea. (He doesn’t. It still stings.)

“Why did you come here, Potter?” His voice is quiet, resigned.

“I wanted to apologize.”

“For what, exactly?”

Harry sighs, twirling his fork between his fingers. The flash of silver in the light is pretty. Pretty and distracting him from the whole reason he came here.

Harry sighs again. “I wanted to apologize for hurting you - for bruising your wrist and screaming in your face. But mostly I wanted to apologize for lying to you.”

Draco leans his weight more fully against the counter. His eyes are walled but attentive. It’s better than Harry really could have asked for.

“I lied when I told you I did all of,” he pauses, waving a hand in the air to capture the room. “All of this because it was the right thing to do. I mean, it was the right thing to do. You shouldn’t be boxed in because of decisions you made as a seventeen year old. But I can’t pretend I did it because of that. I did it because you deserve all of this. You deserve all of this and more.”

Harry summons all his Gryffindor courage. “Through all our post-fuck conversation, I’ve gotten to know you.”

Draco shifts on his feet, looking away in discomfort. Harry plows on. “I’ve gotten to see you, not as a spoiled, bigoted child but as a man. An adult who’s seen the world and knows who he is and I-”

Harry falters. He desperately wants to lay it on the table. He wants to say his piece, to confess his love for Draco. In a perfect world, Draco will tell him he loves him back and they’ll live happily ever after. What’s more likely is that Draco will disappear into Muggle New York and Harry will never see him again. Still-

Draco’s voice snaps him from his thoughts. “Say what you want to say, Harry.”

Harry sucks in a breath, but when he speaks it’s barely a whisper. “It seems I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Something in Draco’s eyes soften. The silver becomes the glint of sunlight off a stream, warm and shifting and realer than anything Harry’s ever seen and he suddenly, desperately wants to drown in it. When Draco holds out a beckoning hand, Harry rises to greet it as though in a trance.

He steps between Draco’s legs, their foreheads bumping. Draco reaches up, eyes asking as his fingertips tap Harry’s glasses. At his small nod, Draco eases off the frames and sets them on the counter before slipping off his own glasses. Soon enough, his hands are on Harry’s shoulders. They breathe the same air and Harry is sure that if he licked his lips, he might brush Draco’s lips as well. It’s a heady thought. Draco’s thumbs stroke his collar bones in a soft, dizzying caress. Gods, he’s had those fingers nearly everywhere on his body, but this touch sends his heart into overdrive.

“I won’t lie to you,” Draco whispers. “And tell you I feel something I don’t feel yet. But I stand close to the edge.” A flush suddenly lights up his cheeks and ears. Harry raises a hand to brush the shell and delights in Draco’s shiver.

“You showed me a side of you on those nights,” Draco confesses. “You showed me a man who is kind and brash and funny and ridiculously foolish all at once. But I wonder: who will you be in the daylight?”

“Whoever you want me to be.”

Draco snorts, his nose scrunching and his face nearly collapsing in on itself. Harry feels his heart swell a little further. “It seems the foolish part of you holds true.”

Harry pushes his forehead into Draco’s, thrilled when Draco nuzzles back.

“I’m serious,” he murmurs. “I want to be all of those things. I don’t want to be the saviour of anyone. I’m quitting the Aurors - I’ve applied to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts.”

“Oh good,” Draco drawls. “I’ll never get rid of you.”

Harry grins, nipping Draco’s nose because he’s close and he can.

“Nope,” he sighs, popping the ‘p’. “Not if I get the job, anyways.”

“You will.” Draco’s eyes are soft and believing and it makes Harry feel like he’s floating. “Minerva would be a fool to pass you up.”

“Why? ‘Cause I’m the Saviour of the Wizarding World?”

“Well, yes,” Draco admits. “But mostly because you have this annoying habit of believing in the best in people. Believing in their potential and all that rot.”

“Ah,” Harry teases. “My fatal flaw.”

Draco huffs a laugh. His hands come up to frame the sides of Harry’s neck before they sweep back down to his shoulders, leaving a swath of tingles in their wake.

Harry knows he sounds too hopeful for his own good, but he can barely help himself when he asks, “Can I kiss you?”

Draco rolls his eyes, but pulls him closer.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’d rather hoped you would.”

Harry fits his lips to Draco’s.

Forever, tomorrow, today. Today, there’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang out with me on tumblr:   
sarahreallymademedoit


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